Assessing Concreteness Rating Data in Older Adults

Older adults are typically underrepresented in psycholinguistic research. This motivated survey research to see to if the judgment of word concreteness (i.e., degree to which a word evokes the senses) is changed in aging populations. Older adult respondents in my study rated words as being less concrete than respondents in previous surveys with predominantly younger respondents. This knowledge can be leveraged in speech therapy serving predominantly elder patient populations (e.g., persons with post-stroke aphasia).